Josephine Beth Lumumba has been suffering from brain tumour since 2013.
She frequently complained of eye pain, but it was not until early this year that a medic diagnosed her condition as sella suprasellar – a brain tumour in her forehead. The tumour interfered with the nerves essential for her to see.
Josephine, 48, underwent surgery at Coptic Hospital in Nairobi to remove the tumour at a cost of Sh3.4 million.
“Unfortunately, the surgery was unsuccessful and left her paralysed. She was in the Intensive Care Unit for four months. She was then detained for weeks because I failed to pay the medical bill,” her husband, Patrice Lumumba Musyoka, said at their home in Katyethoka, a remote village in Kitui central.
Musyoka only managed to get his wife out of the hospital after depositing title deeds of their pieces of land.
The father of four, who quit his job as a building contractor to take care of his wife, is appealing for financial assistance to take Josphine to India for another operation which is expected to cost Sh5.7 million.
“I had to resign because there is no one else to take care of her. Times have been very hard for us,” he said.
Musyoka is seeking help from friends and well-wishers and hopes to raise over Sh9 million to pay for both the pending hospital bill in Nairobi and for the surgery in India.
“I fear that our properties will be auctioned. The hospital wrote demanding that I pay Sh300,000 per month from January next year,” he said.
The now jobless man has also to feed his family and pay school fees for his children, two of them in university and one a class eight candidate next year.
He can be reached on cellphone 0729936600.
